MHRA Drag Strip/Motor City Dragway (New Baltimore)

Dave Lyall was a teenage member of the Tappet Tickers in 1956, a club sanctioned by the Michigan Hot Rod Association. Members’ dues paid for sixty acres in New Baltimore, Ira Township, and members had to work on the site to prepare it. The strip opened in summer 1957 as the MHRA Drag Strip, with very basic facilities. A flagman started the races. To trigger the pneumatic clocks, an official held a pole with an air hose under a front tire and pulled it away after the launch, and another hose across each lane at the finish stopped them. More hoses were added later to record speeds. An official with a flag stood on each side of the finish, and the one in the winning lane raised his.

Ads put it at Gratiot and 26 Mile Road, but newspapers said it was six miles east of Gratiot, just south of today’s Marine City Highway (26 Mile Road) on the west side of Meldrum Road. On April 19, 1959, Harold Smith of Massillon, Ohio, won top eliminator at 10.68 and 132 mph in his blown Chevy dragster, with Connie Kalitta second at 11.48 and 126. On May 17, 1959, David Pearson, also from Massillon, set the track record at 136 mph in the ‘Blue Angel’ dragster. Ads in 1963-64 called it International Raceway Park, the racer’s drag strip. In 1965 it became Motor City Dragway under NASCAR sanction and began night racing under lights. Dick Sawallich was killed in a racing accident there on May 20, 1967. Hot Rod listed it as an NHRA track in January 1969.